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Nordic Lifestyle: Picking Mushroom

Monday, August 5, 2013

This is my second time to go hiking in search for cantarella mushrooms. Sweden is very well knows with its beautiful nature, forests and hills that are filled with wild treasures such as mushrooms and many types of berries. So picking mushrooms and berries is part of the Swedish culture and this season usually starts from July until the end of September.

This pleasantly aromatic fleshy wild mushroom shines like an exotic golden flower when seen from a distance against the drab autumn forest background. Also known as "golden chanterelle" and "egg mushroom,". Chanterelles seem to be worth their weight in gold. They are golden looking, golden tasting, and golden priced. The cap is fleshy, with wavy, rounded cap margins tapering downward to meet the stem. The gills are not the usual thin straight panels hanging from the lower surface of the cap, as we see in the common store mushroom. Instead, the ridges are rounded, blunt, shallow, and widely spaced. At the edge of the cap they are forked and interconnected. The chanterelle's aroma is variously described as apricot- or peachlike. It is unmistakably different and identifiable.

Chanterelles will reappear in the same places year after year if carefully harvested so as not to disturb the ground in which the mycelium (the vegetative part of the mushroom) grows. Which make most of the Swedes keep their mushroom picking places a secret.